Kolchak: The Night Stalker quotes

Unfortunately, for those of us who are genuinely interested in the occult, witchcraft's big business.

Carl Kolchak

Ah.

Big business and free speech is what this country's all about, right?

Carl Kolchak

Well, I'll agree about free speech.

Carl Kolchak

Dying and maiming were coming into vogue in the fashion business.

Carl Kolchak

[voiceover] The teenage years - sixteen candles, fervent passions, aimless joyrides, and the forbidden taste of beer - a time the world allows for sowing one's wild oats; but, for some individuals I came to know in the summer of their discontent, it had been a time when they had sown the seeds of their own destruction.

Carl Kolchak

There's an old simple axiom about the dead: Don't disturb them, not for any reason at all. Well, I decided to ignore that, and, so, I was almost beheaded by a phantom sword.

Now, you're just upset, Mrs. Morton, and thanks to this man and his morbid, macabre babbling!

Carl Kolchak

Babbling? And you're supposed to be the brightest and the youngest captain on the force, huh? Well, you're not even fit to be captain of the Rockettes! Suck in your gut!

And you're telling me that I should go into a barn of bones, and-and find someone's skull, and then play pin-the-head-on-the-stump?

[Luis is trying to get a guillotine exhibit working] Ah, that's just marvelous, Luis. Fix it! And never mind excuses about 200-year-old wood, either. Hmm. I'm sorry, Mr. Kolchak, but you'll have to come back tomorrow. The exhibit starts tomorrow, and we're unprepared. We're totally unprepared.

Carl Kolchak

Yeah, well, I'm only sorry I'm not gonna be able to make the exhibit. Maybe I can help you out with a feature story or... Even with pictures.

[Luis tests the guillotine exhibit behind them] Wax. Wax, Luis! And some good old-fashioned elbow grease!

Carl Kolchak

That always helps. Yeah.

I like your idea, Mr. Kolchak. But no pictures until we get it working right.

Carl Kolchak

Oh, certainly.

What, um, aspect of the Reign of Terror would you like to concentrate your oeuvre on?

Carl Kolchak

Oeu...

Picture ramifications? Social problems? Historical antecedents, perhaps?

Carl Kolchak

Well, actually, I was thinking more about the supernatural aspects.

The supernatural aspects of the Reign of Terror? That's inane.

Carl Kolchak

But original.

[chuckles] There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.

Carl Kolchak

Yeah, I know. I know that a lot of heads we're chopped off during that Reign of Terror. But, uh, were there any unearthly events resulting from that lopping off of heads? I mean, that you know of.

You're not interested in history, Mr. Kolchak. You're interested in wives' tales.

Use some steel wood, Luis!

Carl Kolchak

Try graphite! What about those wives' tales?

Oh, there was some... [scoffs] nonsense about, uh, burying the executed in common graves. Well, with careless gravediggers and what have you, the heads and the bodies were often separated, sent to different locations.

Carl Kolchak

Oh, you mean like what happens to luggage out at the airport?

Exactly. Happened to me when I flew into Chicago.

Carl Kolchak

It happens all the time here. It's terrible. What happened to those headless bodies?

Oh, legend has it that headless specters, corpses were seen wandering around the streets of Paris, attempting to wreak revenge on those that had decapitated them.

Carl Kolchak

What did the people in Paris do about these wandering corpses?

A program was instituted to rebury the heads with the bodies, and to make sure that future burials were done with care.

Carl Kolchak

And that stopped the dead from walking, right?

Legend would have us believe it did.

[sighs] Will you get off that platform? I'll do it myself, Luis!

Carl Kolchak

Uh, Dr. Strig?

Yes?

Carl Kolchak

Try shoe polish.

Shoe polish?

Carl Kolchak

[a car is driving down a country road at night. Kolchack speaks in a voiceover] It was Goethe who said we love girls for what they are. Even the great Goethe could have learned something from the tale that took place on the campus of Illinois State Tech. [the car stops in front of a woman] May 10th, 11:02. Don Rhiner, the school's star running back and candidate for All-American was out for a drive. [the woman gets into the car] Don never did make All-American.

Uh, do you have a comment to make?

Carl Kolchak

Well?

Yeah - but you couldn't print it.

Look, Kolchak - I gotta tell you something. Some people dream about retiring.

Carl Kolchak

Uh-huh.

I dream about breaking your face.

Carl Kolchak

I love you too, Siska. Listen - how's your therapy coming along? A-okay?

Shut up.

Carl Kolchak

He went bananas in Iraq.

He should have stayed in Chicago. The same thing would have happened; he would have saved travel expenses and jet lag.

Carl Kolchak

[into his tape recorder] The campus security force insisted on calling the Chicago Police to press charges against me. But they found a sudden surprising resistance from Dr. C. Evan Spate, who claimed the tablet had been broken accidentally. And despite verification by a confused and frightened Michael Thompson, neither reporter, Ms. Rosalind Winters nor I, had enough hard evidence to file a story. It had all turned to dust. However, published story or not, I can only say to you is that if you should ever meet a young woman who seems just too lovely to be really of this world, well just remember, there's a very good chance that she isn't. [chuckles]

Carl Kolchak

Businessman? What businessman keeps a mummy in the basement and a dummy in a key staff position?

Tony Vincenzo

Carl, you yourself said that the mummy vanished, right?

Carl Kolchak

Yeah.

Tony Vincenzo

You had a terrible hit on the head, and you saw things. And as for having dummies in key staff positions, I'm as guilty as the next.

Carl Kolchak

I won't be around for the new Millennium, will you?

Tony Vincenzo

It says here the Andrews family changed their name from Arguello. And they're from Jalisco, and the hotel chain started in Veracruz.

Carl Kolchak

It's Ha-lisco, Tony, not Ja-lisco.

Tony Vincenzo

Oh, excuse me, Jose. I don't care if they came from Hersey City, New Hersey! There are Mexicans there too, but none of them are Aztecs.